Resolve
by KateMonster
Summary: Michael Scofield is almost free, but first he has to outsmart the Los Angeles FBI, who have Charlie Eppes on their side. Prison Break and Numb3rs crossover.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Resolve

Rating: T

Author: Kate Monster

Author's Note: I personally have an extremely hard time veering away from canon, but this story that just had to be told, even if the Prison Break season one finale didn't really get to a place where I could quite make it work. Nevertheless, the idea of putting Don and Charlie Eppes together with Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield just couldn't get out of my head once it got in there. So consider this an alternate take on an interesting story that could have happened, if Fox and CBS weren't competing networks and all.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Contains slight spoilers for Numb3rs season two, and bigger spoilers for Prison Break season one.

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"Don! Got a fax for you from the inbox." David Sinclair waved the paper in the air as he proceeded across the floor. A word on the paper caught his eye and he stopped in his tracks to skim the document. "Whoa. That's just – whoa." 

"What? Let me see," Don Eppes said, snatching the paper away with an annoyed glance. David, for his part, waited for the reaction. When he saw what was on the paper, he, too, stopped short. "Whoa."

"What does the Chicago office want our help on this for?"

Don studied the paper in his hand closely. "My old buddy Harry from Albequerque is stationed up there now and did me a huge favor back in the day. Guess it's time to return the favor."

"Must be some favor. They think those guys are heading this way?" David tried to peek at the fax again, but Don yanked it away.

"Can you just hold on for the briefing already? They don't know _where_ the hell those guys are going," Don said. At David's look, he shrugged. "What? I read the papers, too, you know. Listen, I'm gonna make a call to Chicago, can you find out where Megan and Colby vanished to?"

"I think they went to lunch 'bout five minutes ago. Slow day, you know?" At least, it had been, up until now.

"When are they coming back?"

"Megan said one."

"Okay, that gives us enough time to call for a briefing. You ate already, right?"

"Yeah man, I'm good."

"Good. Here's your big chance." He handed him the documents. "Have Kim copy these and get them on the computer for the briefing at one. Make sure she knows it's super confidential, okay?" He started to leave, and then stopped.

"What?" David asked.

"I was gonna say, but no, never mind," Don muttered, and he turned to hurry out the door. Then they wouldn't be calling Charlie in on this one. Not today. David knew the shorthand as well as anyone else in the office.

David watched him go and shook his head. The cases on their desks tended to be good, but rarely this good. He'd have to cancel his plans for the night. She could wait. Something better had just come up.

-----------------

"Michael Scofield." Don turned the page in his packet and Megan Reeves quickly flipped hers as well. Everyone knew what had been reported by the media, and she was just as eager as the rest of them to know what hadn't. "Educated at Loyola. Civil engineering." He stopped, reading the words one more time just to make sure. After a cough, he continued. "Arrested for armed robbery. According to the court transcripts, pleaded no contest and requested to be incarcerated at a facility near his home."

"He had his MA?" Megan asked, skimming over the paper in her hands. This was indeed juicy stuff that the media hadn't quite picked up on yet, and her brain was already churning. "Graduated magna cum laude." She sat back on top of the desk and crossed her legs. "This is not your typical, every day armed robbery profile."

"He's no Charlie Eppes, but no slacker, either," Colby pointed out, tapping the paper.

"Yeah," Don said, shooting a funny look at Colby, "Next page, guys, Lincoln Burrows. Quickest route to the electric chair in the history of the state of Illinois. Shot Terrence Steadman at close range, sentenced to death, every appeal overturned. Now the Chicago office is acting under the assumption that Scofield knew exactly what he was doing when he robbed that bank, and had all of this planned from the start."

"Brothers," Megan confirmed, more from memory than from the briefing. "And with different last names, nobody in the judicial system seemed to pick up on it, which is amazing to begin with."

"Half brothers?" David asked.

"Full," Megan corrected. "Looks like the last names were the mother's decision."

"Convenient," Colby said aloud.

"A lot of things are convenient here," Megan agreed, nodding to Colby. "I mean, just read the newspapers. Guy gets incarcerated with his brother. Happens to find his way through the tunnel systems - flawlessly. Passes through doors he shouldn't be able to pass through. Walls magically disappear for him. Personally, I'm dying to know how he did it."

"This is not an open and shut case," Don said, catching her glance. He rubbed his forehead in deep concentration. "This guy, he knew what he was doing even before he robbed the bank. And he knows where he's going now."

"You know, maybe we should call Charlie in on this?" Megan asked. "Have him take a look at the escape route, see if he sees anything that Chicago missed."

"This – this isn't math, okay?" Don said. "Charlie's giving exams this week, he – I think we can do this one without him. Give him a break from the FBI for a little while. He does have other work to do, you know, and we don't need a mathematician on everything."

Megan ducked her head and caught David giving her a sideways, questioning glance. She looked away. Something was off.

"So this whole thing was premeditated," Colby said, graciously changing the subject. "Right? All the way through?"

"The most elaborate prison break in the history of the United States," Don confirmed. "Now, we have a list of contacts these guys had, and some of them are in the Los Angeles area. Chicago thinks at least some of the escapees might try to cross the border nearby."

"So why not call border patrol?" David asked. "Keep a lookout?"

"Nah, it's gonna take more than that," Don said. "This guy is smart, and his buddies are dangerous. He's gonna be five steps ahead of border patrol, so we need to get ten steps ahead of him."

Now Colby glanced over at Megan, and she found it incredibly difficult to not raise the point again. "And by smart…?"

Don, however, seemed to be missing it. "I want to get everybody who ever lived within ten blocks of these guys on tap for an interview. Classmates. Cousins. If they've met any of the men on that list, we want to talk to them."

Megan stood up abruptly at the desk. Colby and David whipped their heads around to follow her, almost as if they were waiting for her reaction. "Don," she said. "Can I see you for a sec?"

"Yeah, sure," he said distractedly, and they moved out of the door together, leaving David and Colby alone.

"I just want to make sure," she said, "that your reasons for not bringing Charlie into this are professional, and not personal."

"They're professional, and not personal," he said without missing a beat. "He's busy, we don't really need him on this."

"You skipped the psych report on Scofield in there," she pointed out.

"Yeah, we're just covering basics here." He cocked his head. "What are you saying exactly?"

"I didn't skip the psych report, and I read it."

"Okay?"

"This guy is a genius. What his psychiatrist said about him… what it boils down to…" She took a deep breath. "He's a pattern-seeker."

"So?"

She blinked and then pressed on. "Well, that's our advantage, isn't it? We already have a patterner of our own. You, and me, and the guys in there, we're not going to see what this guy is thinking ahead of time. Our brains don't work like that. Charlie's does."

"Yeah, and I don't want Charlie on this."

Megan did her best not to act too thrilled at the confirmation that she was right. Not professional. "Because his exams are more important than escaped murderers on the loose in the Los Angeles area?"

"Because believe it or not, I did read everything," Don said. "Including the psych eval. And I don't want Charlie getting into this guy's head, I don't think it's healthy."

"The guy did it for his brother," Megan said. "Is that why you don't want Charlie involved? Is this personal, or professional?"

Don sighed. "Look-"

"So we keep Charlie out of the field work this time around. Or we don't show him the full psych eval. But I just think we should have him retrace Scofield's steps, see if he sees anything that Chicago hasn't caught yet."

"He's been having a hard time lately. Ever since the shooting-"

"You know what? He's dealing, Don. He's dealing just fine. And he'll deal with this, but if we're going to have any chance of intercepting Scofield, we have got to be five steps ahead of him. You said it yourself. The rest of us will never catch up. But Charlie might. If anybody can do it."

"I don't want Charlie inside this guy's head," Don insisted again.

"So you're going to treat him like a child? He's a professional. Let Charlie make that decision."

"Let Charlie make what decision?" The voice from around the corner took both of them by surprise.

Don sighed and turned around as his brother entered the room. "Look-"

"I was just coming by to return your Lost DVDs on my way home, I've had some free time lately and I finally finished them," Charlie said, holding up a shopping bag with a vaguely rectangular shape bulging out. "What's going on?"

Megan folded her arms and fixed Don with a stare.

"I was just saying, I thought you were busy this week is all," Don said.

"My exams are over," Charlie pointed out. "I've got the TA's grading everything… I just have to check their work and sign off on everything. What's the case?"

Don locked eyes with Megan for a long moment before turning to hand the packet to Charlie, who snatched it away and flipped through with increased vigor. "The Fox River prison break? Whoa! Are you kidding me?"

"Charlie," Don said slowly, "got a moment to come on in and sit through the rest of this briefing with us?"

From the look on Charlie's face, Megan knew that their chances of catching the escapees had just increased. Probably, if given the chance, Charlie could tell her by how much. That wasn't so much her concern at the moment, however, and she followed the Eppes brothers back into the carrel to find out exactly what else the FBI knew about the convicts.

TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

"Take a look at this."

Megan spread the photographs out on her desk as the men gathered around. Colby leaned forward bracing himself on a chair, David stood straight with his arms folded behind him. Don and Charlie, for their parts, were standing on opposite sides of the desk looking distinctly uncomfortable, which Megan was doing her best to ignore. "Look. Michael Scofield in 2001 at a Loyola alumni fundraiser." She pointed to the next one. "Michael Scofield in 2005 at prison intake. Notice anything?"

"Snazzy dresser," Colby said, looking at the lakeside fundraiser photo. "Still looks pissed off in both pictures, though."

"No…" she said, still tapping the mugshot. "Not his demeanor. Keep looking."

"His arms," David said suddenly.

"Bingo."

"Look at them," David continued, growing excited now. "In oh-one dude looks like a frat boy with that t-shirt. In oh-five, like a thug."

"The tattoos?" Don asked, crowding in. "So a structural engineer took up an interest in… body art?"

"But look at this," David said, reaching for another picture and reading the caption. "July, two thousand and four, and this one should show the tattoos, right? It's short enough. But clear as day, nothing on him."

"You think he got all those tattoos in the year before he went into prison?" Colby asked. "That's one hell of a lot of time underneath a needle."

"And you'd know, because.,.?" Megan asked, which Colby chose to ignore while feigning increased interest in the 2004 picture.

"Charlie?" Don prompted. Charlie had been tapping at his upper lip, but at his brother's words, he dropped his hand to his side.

Charlie shook his head. "Nothing, I just…" He trailed off into silence.

"So we have a structural engineer with a brother on death row, who in just under a year gets a full body tattoo and then robs a bank," Don said. "Now the question is, where does he go when he gets out?"

"If it were me?" Colby said, staring critically at the pictures, "I'd head for the tattoo removal parlor." Megan tried to cover her smile with a cough.

"We can't depend on them following conventional methods," Megan pointed out. "My guess is, they know where we expect them to go, so we're not going to find them in the usual places."

Don stood back up and started flipping through his packet again. "Okay, she's right, guys, Chicago has been tracking leads with family members of the escapees, business connections, even mob connections. They've got surveillance everywhere, but nobody has seen these guys since they took off. It's up to us to try to think the way…" He glanced up at Charlie. "The way Scofield thinks," he finished.

"Can… can we get a better picture of these?" Charlie asked, still leaning over the desk.

"Why?"

"Just… look at this." He tapped the enlarged photo. "On his arm, it says 'English, Fitz, Percy'. Those are the streets on that map, aren't they? Around the prison?" He pointed to the briefing document in his hand.

Don blinked and then started flipping frantically through his photocopied documents. After a moment, he settled on one and his eyebrows slowly lifted. "Yes," he said. "Yes. They are."

Everyone sat back at once, processing this. Don stared at Charlie.

"You think it's a code?" Colby asked. "In the tattoos?"

"Just like that girl we had washed up on the beach," David said. "The one with the phone number on her foot."

"What else would it be?" Megan said. "It makes… it makes so much sense. Why would a guy, master's education, working at a high-paying firm like that, get tattooed? He doesn't fit the profile at all of people who do things like this. I mean look at it. It's designed so that all he has to do is put on a button-down shirt and you'd never know it was there. He could waltz right in to a job at a high-end firm and fit right in. Charlie's right. He did this to carry information. He wasn't trying to impress anybody. He had nobody to impress."

"But what information was he carrying?" Don finished the question.

Megan's head shot up. "He didn't just plan this from the beginning. He planned it even before. This _was_ the plan, all along." For a moment, the entire room was silent as they all considered the implications.

Don finally broke the silence. "All right. I'm going to get Chicago on the line and see what they can send us on that tattoo. Figure out what's underneath that shirt. Meantime, David, Megan, start working down that list. Get out there and talk to anybody you can. Colby, once I get off the phone, you're with me, we're gonna work the agencies and tap in to the stakeouts, find out what the deal is. We got a whole lot of teams working this and I want to make sure we're not missing out on anything."

"What do you want me to do?" Charlie asked as everyone else started to scramble.

Don placed a protective hand on his shoulder. Charlie glanced at it but didn't move. "Take a break," Don said. "It's going to take us awhile to get the data, so unless you have any equations at the moment, I need you to sit tight while I get a hold of the pictures you need." He dropped his hand to his side.

"Do you mind if I-" Charlie held up the copy of his report from Chicago.

Megan locked eyes with Don for a long moment.

Don took a deep breath and nodded. "No, no," he said. "Go ahead. Knock yourself out. If you come up with anything..." He made a phone with his hand and held it to his face. Charlie nodded his agreement and leaned back on the desk, studying the report as the agents made their way out of the office.

------------------------

"You're not still grading those papers?" Alan shot Charlie a tired look as he hung his jacket beside the door.

"No, I gave that to the T.A.s," Charlie said. "Just some stuff. For Don." He wondered briefly how often he'd used that answer to his father's inquiries. It did seem like most of his work these days was for Don. He was getting quite the mileage out of his T.A.s this year.

"Ah, right. What is it this time? Terrorism? Arson? Murder?"

"Prison break."

"Wha?" Alan nearly tripped over the rug in excitement as he made his way over to the table. "Not that thing up in Illinois?"

"Yeah. FBI thinks they might be headed here, I'm going over the convicts and analyzing their risk factors. Not so typical a bunch. Dad, did you see that the guy who they think masterminded the whole thing majored in civil engineering, just like you?"

Alan was already nodding. "Yeah, my buddy Tony heard that on the news."

Charlie turned to him with a slight twinkle in his eye. "So, tell me. Did they teach you in school how to break out of a maximum security prison?"

"That wasn't covered, no," Alan said, sitting carefully across from Charlie. "But it depends. Did he engineer prisons?"

"Not according to this," Charlie said. He set the paper down. "He did it for his brother, you know. Megan thinks he planned it from the beginning. Got himself in to save his brother's life."

"Rather unconventional," Alan remarked. "They must have been close."

"I wonder how 'close' you really have to be to react when the state is going to kill your family," Charlie said.

Alan shrugged. "Family is family."

Charlie paused, struggling for a moment. "I don't know what I'd do. If you or Don were in that situation."

Alan tilted his head, considering this. "Well, the guy did kill the vice president's brother, after all, Charlie. It's not exactly something that would happen with me, or with Donnie."

"So you believe he's guilty."

"He was convicted."

"Convictions have been overturned. Heck, I've overturned them. And this execution – the speed of it, only three years from the crime to the date of execution – how do we know he got a fair shot?" Charlie's voice rose as his excitement grew.

"He got the same trial process as anybody else. Probably more of an advantage, what with being a white man in the system. Maybe it's a shoddy system, but what he did was still illegal, no matter what you think of the death penalty."

Charlie sighed. He leaned back in his chair, two legs rising dangerously off the floor. "I mean, yeah, I don't agree with the death penalty, even though my work has led to that sentence before. But each and every one of those people is still alive, still going through the system, and I've been working these cases for a while now. This? It just… something isn't right, that's all." He scratched at his hair for a moment before bringing the chair back down to rest.

"You're right. Something's not right. Half a dozen convicted felons hogtied a warden, got out of a maximum-security prison and went missing. That's not right," Alan said.

Charlie leaned over the papers. "I'm missing something," he said. "It's not equations. Not yet. It's just a connection in there somewhere, it's logic, it's the pattern. It doesn't fit. The risk factors." He shook his head. "I give up. I'll take it in to work tomorrow, see what Larry makes of it." He closed the packet and stood up.

"Good night, then," Alan said, reaching for his glasses and opening a book.

Charlie took a step and then stopped. He watched his father for a moment, studying him beneath the light of the lamp, before speaking. "You know, I don't think I could do it."

"Do what?" Alan looked up at him.

"Prison. Even if it was Don. Even if it was you. I wouldn't make it two seconds."

Alan opened his mouth, closed it, and then took a moment to collect his thoughts. "Like I said, Charlie. We're not that kind of family."

"Hmmm." Charlie stood up, closing the case file on the table. "Just make sure you pay your parking tickets on time, Dad?"

Alan waved him off with a hand. "I said good night, son."

-------------------------------

"Charlie, I brought – uh, what are we studying now, the mathematics of body art?" Amita took in the blown up photos on the chalkboard and stepped backward through the doorway, positioning herself back out in the hallway.

"Tattoos," Larry said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "A message."

"Good morning, Amita," Charlie added.

"Tattoos make me nervous," Amita said, still lingering in the door. "Just the thought of a needle with permanent ink near my skin is enough to give me a heart attack. Oh, and Charlie, I was just bringing you one of those bottles of Sattui I told you about."

"It's some sort of communication," Charlie said, distracted. "Used by the prisoners in the Illinois prison breakout."

"Whoa," she said, finally entering the room all the way, but still clutching her book bag for protection. "That's how they did it?"

Charlie had to smile briefly at the thought of Amita being without words for even a moment. "Our suspected kingpin had all of this work done in the year prior to his incarceration. And yet nobody can figure out exactly what it all means. And it's hard to even run any kind of statistical analysis on it because we don't have a two-dimensional image of it."

"Well, I have a friend over in the biology department who can probably extract some biometric data from that photo," Amita said, digging in her bag for a moment before producing the bottle of wine. Charlie examined it with a grin and stashed it in his bag. "We can just factor in gradients for the geometry of his body shape, can't we? And plug that into my modeling program to create a two-dimensional layout? It shouldn't be too hard."

"That'd work," Larry agreed, rubbing at his ear now.

"I just hate to factor out the third dimension," Charlie said, peering closely at one of the images. "I hate to factor out any dimensions, really. Agent Reeves says Scofield is a structure whiz – he understands how the pieces fit together, and once we take them apart? We lose our ability to see them the way that he does."

"What could this stuff possibly mean?" Amita asked. "Angels and devils and swords. Ripe chance woods. English Fitz Percy. Bolshoi booze. Cute poison. It doesn't sound like any code I've ever come across. Or maybe they're anagrams. But for what…?" She glanced at Charlie, who was licking his lips now as he circled the images. "Charlie?"

He blinked. "What?"

"The words. Do they strike you as any code you've come across?"

"Oh, it's not code," Larry said with confidence.

Amita stared at him. "Ripe chance woods? Isn't code?"

"Not a formal one, anyway. It's not a communication, it's one man's notes to himself. Which is an important distinction. They're hints. It's not designed to convey information, but to trigger memory. The hypothesis is that everything in that design is meant to remind one person – the designer – of something he needed to remember."

"Like tying a string around your finger, or writing a phone number on your hand," Amita said.

"Or foot," Larry pointed out.

"With a very, very long string," Charlie added.

"Or very permanent ink for the phone number," Larry agreed. "There's, there's no rules to it, it's just – reminders. Different game entirely."

"It's brilliant, really," Amita said, lighting up. "You can't take notes with you into prison, and if you've got a lot of information to remember – disguising it in a tattoo? This guy isn't stupid."

"Definitely not. He graduated magna cum laude in civil engineering," Charlie said.

"Like your father the city planner?" Amita asked. She moved beside Charlie to peer at the tattoo, her mouth hanging open as she studied the picture.

"Something like that. Why?"

Her finger ran along the picture, delicately tracing the lines of the tattoo. "The patterns – well, don't you think these look like, paths? Streets, or something?"

Charlie moved closer so that his nose was nearly touching the paper, his eyes scanning back and forth rapidly. "Yes," he said slowly. "Yes. But we already covered the streets. Unless it's a map to… something else."

"Maybe we should try the analysis, then. I'll get the calculations we need from my friend over in biology, and we can run the two dimensional image against maps of the area to see if it matches at any level."

"Streets don't act like this," Charlie said, rocking slightly back and forth. "This isn't designed to carry people from place to place. These paths… they're only designed to go in one direction."

"Wh-what are you saying?" Larry stammered, wrinkling his nose and looking closer at the photograph.

"They're pipes," Charlie said with sudden realization. The pieces seemed to swirl in front of him, as he could almost imagine them taking on the shapes that Michael Scofield must see. One flowing to the next, with markers, with notations. "Schematics. It's not streets. It's the diagram. It's his escape route, but not on roads. This… this is the prison itself."

Amita stopped in her tracks. "So… no go on the biology analysis?"

"Go ahead and get it, just so we can be sure," Charlie said, reaching for his cell phone. "But in the meantime, I'm going to get Don's guys to take a closer look at what exactly Michael Scofield was engineering in the days before he became a felon."


End file.
